


New Year Letters - 2014

by eternaleponine



Series: Ghosts That We Knew [26]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Gen, WARNING: mentions of suicide, Warning: Mentions of Sexual Assault, Warning: mentions of abortion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 12:49:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3135083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the letters that the kids wrote to themselves on January 1, 2014, as mentioned in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/951779/chapters/1861493">Time for a Sign</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Year Letters - 2014

**Bobbi**

January 1, 2014

To say that 2013 sucked would be an understatement. 2013 was absolutely, without a doubt, unconditionally, the _worst_ year of my life. It was also, coincidentally, very nearly the _last_ year of my life... twice.

I don't blame my mother... much. It's not her fault that my heart tried to explode. It was, however, her fault that I nearly died (the first time) doing something that I absolutely hated. She was the one who forced me into playing soccer, saying that it would be good for me to learn how to work as part of a team, etcetera, etcetera, blah blah blah. I can work fine as part of a team, if I'm doing something that I actually care about. 

At least she didn't limit me to _just_ playing soccer; I wouldn't have been able to stand that. But soccer was generally free, or fairly low cost, and Tae Kwon Do wasn't. Isn't. 

But it all started in the spring, playing in that travel league that I never wanted to be part of. If I had to play, I argued, why wasn't just playing school soccer in the fall enough? Because she didn't want me to lose my skills, she said. I don't care, I said. I don't care about my soccer skills. You made a commitment, she said. No, _you_ made a commitment, I told her. Either way, she said, as if it didn't matter, you're playing.

And then I had a heart attack. Fifteen years old, in otherwise perfect health, and I had a heart attack. The doctors said it was a miracle that I lived. Most people who had previously undetected heart defects like I did, once their body decided it was done, that was it. But they got me to the hospital, got it restarted (or whatever they did, I'm still honestly a little sketchy on the details and I'm not really sure I _want_ anyone filling in the blanks) and I lived. 

Except my life was so much smaller then. I couldn't just get up, move around, do what I wanted to do, because the damage to my heart had been extensive, and the only hope that I had was to get a heart transplant. I was young and strong, with my whole future ahead of me, and in the end that worked in my favor, because it meant that I was put pretty high on the list, above people who maybe needed a heart more, technically, but whose lives were already mostly over. Fair? I don't know. 

I should just be grateful, right? And I _am_... on the one hand. On the other, it's kind of creepy knowing that you've got someone else's heart in your chest, a lump of meat that used to belong to someone else fueling your body now, and yours is just... gone.

I asked if I could keep it. If they could put it in some kind of preservative – formaldehyde or whatever they use now for keeping medical specimens – and let me keep it, but they said no. I think I probably ended up with an extra psych eval or two after that conversation. So where did it go? Thrown out? Incinerated? (I'll spare you the puns about heartburn if that's the case.) My heart is gone, and someone else's is in its place, and it just feels _weird_.

There was one intern at the hospital with a sort of sick sense of humor, and he gave me this book to read, and on the one hand it was funny, and I appreciated that he got where I was coming from with the feeling strange about what I'd been through (this was after the transplant, obviously, in the fall) but on the other hand it was about a society where parents could decide that if their kid was too much of a pain when they got to be a teenager, they would retroactively abort the child, and send them off to be 'unwound'... basically, they were chopped up and used for parts, and it was okay because as long as every part of them was used they were still considered to be alive, but in a 'divided state'. And... seriously, what the fuck? I couldn't put the book down, but it didn't exactly give me warm fuzzy feelings about the muscle in my chest, pumping my blood like it was supposed to, behaving just like a heart is supposed to, but... it felt like it was beating out of time. Like subconsciously I knew the rhythm of my own heart, even though I'd never really paid much attention to it, and after the heart attack it changed some and I noticed it more, but this heart beat with a rhythm that wasn't the sick rhythm, but it wasn't the well one, either.

I didn't say anything to anyone about it, though, obviously, because they would think I'd lost my mind, and I'd spent enough time in the hospital at that point, I didn't want to end up on an extended vacation in the loony bin. So I kept it to myself, told myself it was all in my head, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't right, that it was wrong, off...

Maybe it was just my body adjusting, because the thing is, something _is_ off. That's why you have to take all kinds of drugs to keep your body from rejecting the new organ; because it's not yours, and your body knows it's not yours, and it's going to attack it and try to force it out like it's the biggest germ in the world.

And that happened. Not completely. They were able to arrest the rejection process and turn it around, and the heart is still in my chest, undamaged, and things are going better now, I guess, and I'm back out of the hospital, but that was a hell of a way to spend Christmas, fighting for my life all over again... or having a bunch of chemicals do it for me.

That's where I met Bruce, which... at first I thought maybe it was going to be something – no idea why – and then I thought it definitely wasn't when I found out that he wasn't sick in the body, he was sick in the head... only not really. Just... mixed up, messed up, and I could see that. I could get there, understand where he was coming from at least on some level, and I decided that mostly I just wanted someone I could talk to who wasn't always sunshine and kittens and unicorns like my mother was always trying so hard to be when she was around me. It wasn't what I needed or wanted.

I also didn't want to be treated as if I was fragile, made of glass, likely to break or drop dead at any second (even though, yeah, that had almost happened) and that's what was going on at school. I was given a pass that allowed me to be in the halls when no one else was, leaving class early to get to my next one before everyone else, or getting there late, whatever needed to happen to make sure that I didn't get bumped around too much, like if someone ran into me I would just keel over.

Most of the other kids didn't even want to look at me. I freaked them out, I guess, or they just didn't know what to say. It got to a point where I just got so fed up I asked Mom if I could change schools, just so I wouldn't have to be That Freak Who Almost Died anymore. 

I didn't think she would agree, but I guess maybe it was guilt working in my favor again, or maybe she was just tired of arguing with me, because she got it all arranged while I was in the hospital, and once midterms are over in a few weeks, I'll switch from Oxford Academy to Shield County High School. (Or maybe it was money – with all of the medical bills, maybe it was a relief that she didn't have to pay for school on top of it, even though I was there on almost a full scholarship.) 

At this point I don't even really know what I want from 2014, except to not almost die again. I want to be able to get back to training in TKD like I was before; I'm so close to my second degree but I've barely been able to train for the last... almost a year now... because I was too sick and then it wasn't safe. I have to take the SATs and start figuring out where I want to go to college, since applications are usually due by the end of January. Strange to think that a year from now, I'll be planning the rest of my life.

I guess I should just be grateful that I've got a rest of my life to plan.

Bobbi

* * *

**Bruce**

To My Future Self:

Wow. You really messed up this time. 

You thought when Mom ~~died~~ was killed, that was the worst moment of your life. You thought that it had to get better from there, because it meant that Dad was out of your life, and you were going to get a chance to start over, living with your grandparents. You missed her all the time, like a part of you had been torn out, but things had to get better from there.

Except they didn't, did they? They got worse, because everyone knew, and now you weren't just that smart, slightly socially awkward poor kid. Now you were the murderer's son, and no one knew when to leave you well enough alone, and no one knew what to say to you so they said all the wrong things, and instead of dealing with it you just got angry, until someone said exactly what you didn't want to hear at exactly the wrong moment, and you snapped.

After you nearly beat that guy to death at your old school, you thought that you'd hit rock bottom. You thought that it would have to get better from there, because what could be worse than that? What could be worse than almost killing someone else with your bare hands? What could be worse than, even for a moment, becoming your father?

You were an idiot. There's always worse. The rockiest bottom can still fall out from under you. 

Sometimes, you even start the avalanche yourself.

I don't know why I did it. It seemed like the only answer at the time, but... actually, I don't think that's even true. I think even then I knew that there were other possibilities, but you just get tired, you know? You just get tired of having to rely on other people to help you, you just get tired of knowing that no matter what you do, somehow it's going to come back to bite you in the ass. You just get tired of trying and trying and in the end you're just right back where you started. 

So I decided to end it. I just decided to put myself and everyone else out of their misery. My grandparents really shouldn't be stuck with me; they have enough going on without having a teenager on top of it. My father... he never wanted me in the first place, except when he was told that he couldn't have me, and then it wasn't ever about me, it was about sticking it to The Man or... or maybe to spite my mother. I don't know. He never wanted me. I heard him tell my mother once, a long time ago, in the middle of a fight that I don't think was even really about me, but somehow I got dragged into it – not physically, just in name, just the fact of me – and he said that he'd told her to take care of me, back when she'd gotten pregnant, and I was pretty young then but I was old enough to know that when he said 'take care of' he didn't mean feed and clothe and love... he meant that I shouldn't have ever been born.

So I don't know why, when I was staying with my grandparents, when he got released from jail, why he decided that he wanted to be my father again. It didn't make sense to me then, and it doesn't make sense to me now. He took off this time, and I hope he doesn't ever come back around, but there's no guarantee of it and I've only been out of the hospital for a few days, and Tony says I can stay here whenever I want, for as long as I want or need to, to take the burden off of my grandparents who, like I said, really can't handle it, but...

How long will it really last? How long before he gets sick of me, doesn't want me around anymore? How long before I start to get in the way? How long before his father notices – he's bound to notice eventually, even if Tony says he never will and if he does he won't care – and I get kicked out. Where will I go then? 

It's only a few months, though. Six months, almost seven, and then the summer unless we do the summer program again...

... but again, I'm assuming that I'll still be friends with Tony then, that he'll still be pulling strings for me to get into places like that camp. Which isn't how it should be; I should be doing things on my own. I shouldn't be relying on anyone else, and I keep telling him not to and I wish he wouldn't, but I don't know how to stop him. He means well, I know that. But it's just going to make it harder in the end, when he finds another friend, someone better, someone more interesting, someone...

Someone who's not me. Someone who doesn't have a temper that's likely to turn deadly. Someone who isn't going to decide to swallow a bunch of pills because even though there are other possibilities it just seems like the best one at the time. Someone who he won't find passed out on the bathroom floor, who won't have him sitting in a hospital waiting room on Christmas Eve and into Christmas, waiting to see if he's going to live or die. 

He thinks we're going to go to college together next year, to MIT, but I can't afford it and I don't think a scholarship is likely, unless it comes from the Stark Foundation, and I can't ask for that. I can't even apply because I know Tony will make sure that it works out in my favor and I should be grateful, I really should, because how else am I going to do it, but then eventually he's going to start holding it over me. Eventually he's going to start thinking that I'm just using him, which isn't true, I never asked for any of it, but I can't repay him and...

I don't know. Sometimes I still wish that he hadn't found me. Sometimes I wish I'd just died on the bathroom floor so I wouldn't have to deal with any of this. It would be easier... for me, anyway. Not for them. Not for him. And that wouldn't be fair to them, to make them suffer like that. They've already been to one funeral this year. 

Would I even have a funeral? Who would pay for it?

Tony. Tony would. Tony would make sure that...

Would he? Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would be so mad at me that he would just leave me in the morgue, unclaimed, wait for my grandparents or my father to get me, and then...

I don't think this is how I should be starting the new year. I'm pretty sure my shrink wouldn't approve. I should probably take my meds; I didn't do that this morning because... I guess I wanted to wake up a different person. New year, new me. Second chances, fresh starts. 

This year I need to do better. I need to _be_ better. I need to be worthy of everything that Tony does for me, and I need to learn to stand on my own two feet so that I don't need him to do it. I need to figure out where I'm going and what I'm doing, and I need to go there and do it and...

And it's a scary business, walking out your front door. You might never come back, and maybe it will be because you found a better place and maybe it will be because you got lost and can't find your way home... wherever that is, whatever that means...

I look around and I see people who care about each other, who care about me, even, for reasons I don't understand, and I know I don't deserve this, so I guess this year I need to figure out how to become the person that they all seem to think I am, how to become someone worthy of the friendship that they offer. 

It won't be easy, I'm pretty sure, but nothing ever really has been, and it'll be worth it, I hope. 

And I hope, too, that whenever I read this again, it'll be from a better place.

Bruce  
January 1, 2014

* * *

**Carol**

January 1, 2014

Everyone seems to have decided to do this whole "write a letter to yourself that you'll read at some point in the future" thing. Like we've all got futures, or futures worth thinking about, anyway. Like we're all somehow on equal ground, and like I'm going to _want_ to look back on this at some point in the future and remember what I was thinking.

Because really, it can only go one of two ways: either I get the hell out of here, or I don't. Either I make it to college, or I don't. Either I work hard and achieve my dreams and become somebody... or I don't. 

And guess which one is more likely?

It's such bullshit. The whole American Dream, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you can be anything you want to be, a dream is a wish your heart makes... Okay, maybe not that one. God, my head is pounding. I should have gone looking for some aspirin or something before coming out here. I wonder if there's any Bailey's to put in my coffee...

I've worked my ass off for years. I get good grades - maybe not quite valedictorian level, but I'm up there, and unlike those kids I actually have something remotely resembling a social life – and I participate in the school community. I help other students as a tutor. In the summer I help my dad when he lets me (he doesn't want to let me, but sometimes he needs the help and even if he doesn't want to admit it, I'm pretty good at the whole construction thing). 

And what does he expect me to do, anyway? If I can't go to college, and according to him I can't, then what am I supposed to do other than go into the family business?

Oh wait. Go into the _family_ business. Get married, get pregnant, spend the rest of my life raising my own bunch of brats. 

Not that I don't love kids. I do... but I don't think I'd want any of my own. I don't know that I'd be a very good mother. Maybe at some point in the future I'll change my mind about that, but right now I'd rather be able to give them back at the end of the day, y'know?

And then there's the other complication to that whole married with children plan... but I'm not even going to think about that. I can't even think about that. Not with her right there. 

Maybe I should make some new year's resolutions or something... but I know I won't keep them, so what's the point? What's the point of being hopeful when you know that you're hoping in vain? It's so stupid. Does anyone _ever_ manage to keep a new year's resolution for more than a month or two?

But fine, I'll try anyway.

1\. I will go to college. Somehow, some way, I will go to college. There are scholarships out there, and student loans, although Dad says that student loans force the parents to take out loans too and there's no way that he's doing that, not for me, not when there's no point. Steve is the smart one, he thinks, but my grades are just as good. But if one of us is going to go to college, it's going to be my brother, not me. Because what does it matter if a woman is educated? 

But I have to go. I _have_ to go. I can't live like this, like my mom, my aunts, everyone they know. I can't do it. It will drive me crazy, and...

Actually, that leads to the second resolution.

2\. I will not do anything stupid. I don't mean a little stupid, I mean a lot stupid. I mean earth-shatteringly stupid, ruin your life stupid... stupid.

Like I won't tell Jessica that she's beautiful when the light hits her hair and sometimes it looks reddish and sometimes blue-ish, and how her eyes are like melted chocolate and how she wants to seem hard and like she doesn't care about anything or anyone but I can see through that, see through her, and how I want to get inside those walls and know her, who she is and where she came from and where she's going and why she's like that and...

Yeah, I definitely won't say any of that. That is one incredibly stupid thing that I absolutely, 100% will not do.

But damn, I wish she'd get out of that sunbeam.

\-- Carol

* * *

**Clint**

Natasha.

Because it starts and ends with her. And by 'it' I mean everything. Well, maybe not _everything_ because that makes it sound like my life completely revolves around her, which... it kind of does. Actually. Or it did for most of this year, and she's still at the center of it. So she's the beginning and the end and the middle and a whole lot of places in between.

It would be easier to write this letter to her, I think. Or maybe not. I don't know. I've never written a love letter. I've never really written any kind of letter, so I'm probably doing it all wrong. But I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to be writing this to myself. Not like it's an assignment. It's not going to be graded. But I might as well try to get it right.

~~Clint,~~

Wait, should I put the date first? I think the date goes at the top. Shit. Okay. Try again.

January 1, 2014

Clint,

It's New Year's Day and you're sitting on a couch at Tony's place. It's early, but not too early. Natasha was the first one up, which meant you woke up without her. You kind of had a little bit of a heart attack when you reached over and she wasn't there when you knew she had been the night before, because it's been a really long not-so-great week, and you've been having to remember last winter when things were really bad and you thought for a second (maybe more than a second) that maybe she'd done something stupid.

But no, she just got up and made coffee and sat down to write a letter to herself so she wouldn't forget the past year. I don't know how she could, ever, but hey, if it makes her feel better to write it down, who are you to say no? Your therapist is always telling you to write shit down, keep a journal, whatever, use it to work out your thoughts and feelings and all that, but you never do. Doesn't mean it's bad advice, just that if you put it on paper it feels like it makes it more permanent, more real. And someone could find it and read it and then they'd know what was going on in your head and yeah, no fucking thanks on that.

You keep looking over at her, and sometimes she catches you at it. Whatever she's writing, it's serious. Her forehead is all wrinkled up and she's frowning. You could reach over and try to smooth the tension from her face but you'd only interrupt her and she might get annoyed. Better to just let her do what she's gotta do, write what she's gotta write, and then when she's done you can see about making things better.

It's been a crazy year. It started with her trying to kill herself after you found out that her uncle was selling her to his friends for sex, turning her into a prostitute and forcing her to do god knows what with god knows who. (Except god doesn't know because god doesn't exist. If he did, he'd be one sick fuck for letting that ever happen to anyone, but especially not to a fifteen-year-old girl.) Well, you didn't actually find that out until after you stopped her, after you brought her home and got her warm, after you slept next to her while trying not to touch her because you were so pissed off because you thought even though the two of you weren't officially together, you thought you kind of were together anyway, and you thought you saw her... it felt like cheating on you. Except it's not cheating if you're not together. You felt like she'd betrayed you somehow, and you ran away, betraying her instead, and that was almost the end of everything.

But it wasn't. You found her before she could die of cold and you got her warm and then she told you, because she couldn't not tell you anymore, and the two of you – mostly her, but you ~~helped~~ tried to help – figured it out and got her out and got together for real.

Except when do you count from? Girls are supposed to care about stuff like that, right? Anniversaries and that kind of thing? But when did you get together really? That day, after she told you? It couldn't have been before that, even though you'd kissed on Christmas. Not that day, because then nothing happened after that, because how could it? Even though you loved her, wanted her even then, even knowing, you weren't about to make any kind of move. So when?

Valentine's Day? She gave you her heart for Valentine's Day. 

And then later you found her again, brought her in out of the cold again, and this time even though you knew, even though it was written all over her face in smeared lipstick and mascara, you kissed her because she had to know and you didn't think words were enough, not even signed words, not even then, she had to know that you still loved her, were in love with her, wanted to be with her, more than a friend if she would have you. 

You gave her your heart, purple for a wounded warrior, for her mostly but for you too, and she'd taken it. So Valentine's Day, probably. How cliché. But easy to remember.

You got each other through the months after that, through the arrest and the transition to her living with Principal Fury and the trial and having Jess move in. You made love for the first time (that was before Jess) and you had no idea that it could be like that. It wasn't the first time you'd been with anyone, but it had never been like _that_ , like two people actually becoming more than just two people. I didn't know that you could have sex where the point wasn't just to get off. It was more than that, so much more than that, and I'd had no idea. (And if I'm being honest, it still surprises me sometimes, what it's like being with her.)

We started another year at school and we got recruited to work on the musical and we both left our foster homes and we both went back when Steve pointed out to us that we were maybe not thinking things all the way through and maybe should give them a second chance, and also that we couldn't stay with him. And to keep the peace I went to a family party with the Sullivans, and discovered that Mrs. Sullivan isn't actually horrible all the time, and maybe Steve was right after all that maybe I should try giving them the benefit of the doubt sometimes.

I'm getting this all out of order... somehow I forgot about Barney. Maybe I want to forget about Barney. I saw him again, when I was having a rough time because I couldn't see or talk to Natasha because of the damned trial. And I got to perform with the circus again, and it felt good. It felt amazing, and like I finally fit in again, like I'd finally found my way back to where I should be. It was the only life I'd ever known and the only life I ever thought about living... only then the trial ended and Natasha turned up and I realized that no, it wasn't the only possible life I could have, because I had a life with her, and with our friends, and Barney wasn't the only family I had because I have her, and I want to always have her, and so when I had to choose and Barney thought that there was no way that I was going to choose anything but the circus, anyone but him, it turned out that he was wrong.

Sometimes I regret it, because I don't know what the future's going to bring when I still just barely scrape by in school most of the time and I don't have a plan for what I want to be when I grow up, and I need to because we're all expected to know by the time we finish high school so we can go on to college or wherever we need to to get to where we want to be for the rest of our lives. Which, when you think about it, is kind of insane, because we're still _kids_ , aren't we? Even though I never really felt like a kid, even though I'm pretty sure by most people's standards I was forced to grow up too fast, I don't have it all figured out. Most of the time I just do what I think is right at the time and hope that it turns out okay. But you can't go through your whole life that way, I'm pretty sure, without fucking it up at some point. The only sure thing that I've really got is Natasha... and then I start to wonder how sure that is, even, in the long run.

Because what's going to happen if she gets tired of being with someone who doesn't know what they're doing? She could do anything, be anything, and eventually she's going to figure out that she could do a whole lot better than me. And why would she want to stick with someone who is only ever going to remind her of a time in her life that was so hard? Yeah, I helped her get through it, or at least I think I did – maybe she would have figured things out herself, maybe she would have been all right, but I'm not sure, because she was getting worn down pretty bad by the time we got her out, and maybe she wouldn't have and maybe she needed me...

I don't know. I don't want to think about it. It's supposed to be the new year, a new beginning, and maybe I just need to really focus, get my shit together, work harder and figure things out. Figure out a future where I'm someone she'll want to stay with even after she realizes that she doesn't need me anymore, that I need her more than she needs me, or figure out who to be, how to be without her.

She's looking at me again. Not saying anything, just looking, but that look says everything that I need to hear right now. If it's going to end, it's not now. Right now, she loves me as much as I love her, needs me like I need her, and I'm just going to believe that I'll figure it out, that we'll figure it out together because we've been through so much worse and come through it stronger than before.

So yeah. I guess that's it because I think she's done and I'm hungry and I'd rather just be with her than writing about it. I hope when I read this, especially the end, that I just laugh at how insecure I was, and I hope she's there to ask me why I'm laughing, and that she'll laugh too and call me an idiot in the way that she does that means 'I love you'.

Anyway, yeah, she's definitely done, so I guess I will be too.

Until later,  
Clint

* * *

**Jessica**

January 1, 2014

Dear Mom,

Natasha and Clint are writing letters to themselves about the past year because they don't want to forget. I wish I could, but I know that I never will. And I hope that you never do either. So I'm writing you this letter, which I know I'll never send because I don't want to give you any idea where I am. I don't want you to ever be able to find me and somehow drag me back.

You met Natasha and Clint, but you didn't know it. Do you remember? At the mall, when you were there with some of the other women (and thankfully none of the men, or at least none in the immediate vicinity or I might not have gotten away). ~~God~~ Who the  hell knows why you were there; you weren't Christmas shopping like we were. Christmas was never about gifts, never about anything but having more of the so-called prophet's insanity shoved down our throats in the name of the birth of Jesus. So, y'know, just like any other day, pretty much. That and slaving away in the kitchen all day so the men could have a meal and we could be left with the scraps. Again, as usual.

Natasha is the redhead, the small one who would rip out the throat of anyone who threatened anyone she loves with her teeth if she had to. She's my foster sister, I guess, and sometimes it feels like she actually is my sister, or what I imagine having a sister would feel like. I'm glad I didn't, because then I would have had to worry about what you would do to her after I left. We don't always get along, Natasha and I, but it's gotten a lot better than when I first got here.

Clint is her boyfriend, the boy who pulled us away, got us out there, told you that you had no right to touch me or try to take me anywhere. Unless it was Natasha who said that. I don't really remember; it's kind of a blur because I thought for a second it was over, that I was going to lose everything I'd gained and be right back where I started, only worse off than before because there would be people watching my every move now even more than before.

Maybe you would have even locked me up, or he would have, locked me in a room with food and water when it suited him, access to a bathroom maybe, and a bed, and not much else, and he would have come in and raped me, and raped me again and again until I was pregnant and then he would have kept me locked up until I had the baby and then I would have been tied to him forever. 

Except I wouldn't be. I never will be. Even if that happened, I wouldn't be tied to him because I wouldn't hesitate to leave the baby behind if I had to, or strangle it if I had to, if it was a girl...

I don't know what the last one was. It was too early to tell, and I didn't care anyway. I just wanted it out of me, so I got away and I made it happen. Did you know that? Did you know I was pregnant? Did you know that I was smart enough to find a place to get an abortion? And I don't feel guilty about it. Not for a second. Because now I get a chance at a life, and a blob that's not even a baby yet is a small sacrifice to make, I think, for that.

I go to school now. It took a little while for me to get caught up and there's still a lot of brainwashing that needs to be erased, things that we were taught that just plain aren't true, or things that were so far skewed that when I learned about them again it took a little while to figure out that the teacher was even talking about the same thing. But it turns out I'm actually pretty smart. I'm better at some things than others, but I get pretty good grades most of the time. 

I have friends, too. Not just Clint and Natasha. I have another friend, my best friend, named Carol. She started off as my tutor but now she's more than that. There's Tony, Bruce, Steve, Pepper, Loki... a guy I just met called Thor... they've all known each other longer... well, Carol is new to the group too, we kind of got pulled into it together, and maybe that's why we're closer because we still feel a little bit like outsiders? I don't know. 

I have friends. I have a man who looks out for me but who doesn't expect me to be anything but what I am. As long as I do my homework, do my chores, and don't give him too much attitude, we're fine. And he doesn't look at me like he wants to fuck me, and he doesn't want to own me or order me around or any of that. 

I like cooking. I bet you never expected to hear that, but I do. But I'm cooking for myself, and for my friends and family, and not because I have to but because I want to. We do take turns making dinner, but if I didn't want to do it, they would let me not do it, and just do dishes more often instead. But I take my turn. I'm not very good, but I'm learning. I like baking, too, and I'm getting better about not trying to improvise on recipes because it never really ends well.

I'm also on the costume crew for the school musical. So along with cooking, I also sew. I don't like it much, to be honest, but they were getting on my case to participate more, and everyone else was working on the musical, and Natasha's in charge of the costume crew so I got recruited. At first I didn't want to let her know that I actually knew how to sew, because it might make her ask questions and that's something we try not to do too much, either of us. Any of us. We've all got secrets that we'd rather keep, so we don't ask most of the time and risk someone turning around and demanding answers in return.

Bruce tried to commit suicide on Christmas Eve, and Tony found him and saved him. I know you think it's a sin and I know you think he would have gone to hell for it, but you know what, Mom? You're wrong. You're so fucking wrong because he was already _in_ hell or why would he have tried that? Why would he have done it? Tony can't understand; a lot of people can't. But I can get there. I was so angry at him for trying it because I know what it's like to be that low but I found a way out. I got myself a second chance. So I'm glad that Tony found him, and I think he's glad too. 

And you know what I did last night, Mom? I danced. I danced, and I drank, and I laughed and I swore and I had fun. I _lived_ , Mom, like you never would have let me. You gave me life, and then bit by bit you took it away from me, tried to rein it in, smother who I was to become who you wanted me to be. 

But not anymore. I took my life back from you, because it's _mine_ and no one else's. 

_And it's hard to dance with the devil on your back.  
Given half the chance would I take any of it back?_

_And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't,_  
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road.  
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope... 

_It's always darkest before the dawn._

Your daughter who deserved more than you could ever give,  
Jessica Drew

* * *

**Loki**

January 1, 2014

This year is going to be the year. This year is going to be _my_ year. Thor's gone from school, and gone from the house most of the time, and that's all to the good. Or rather, it's almost all to the good. I'm willing to admit now that he's gone that there were certain advantages to having ~~our~~ his parents so utterly focused on him the majority of the time. Now that he's not around, I find myself under somewhat closer scrutiny than I might otherwise have been, and although it's rare that I complain about attention, there are times when one would really rather be left alone.

Last Christmas – not the one just past but the one before – I told ~~my par~~ ~~Thor's parents~~ all of them that I wanted to find my biological family. It had been about six months since I had cornered them and made them admit that I was not really part of their family, that I was not their child and not his brother, that I was not one of them, never had been and never would be. 

Thor played at being shocked, but of course he wasn't. How could he be? Children do not simply _appear_ out of thin air one day. If I had been the natural-born child of the Odinson's, there would have been a process, and warning about the impending arrival of a child. There would have been weight gain and all sorts of things, and although he claims that he was far too young at the time to know any of this, far too young to really even remember a time in his life when I wasn't there, I don't believe him.

Why should I? He knew, and he kept it from me, just as they did. He colluded with them to keep me in the dark, to try to keep me from knowing my true family, my birthright. He would accuse me of being melodramatic, but he has no idea what it's like to constantly be surrounded by people who claim to be your family, who claim that you belong to them, and that they belong to you, who are lying, not just to you but to themselves. There was never any question that he was their child. There was never any question what place he held in their esteem. I was always second best.

I didn't bring it up again this year, although a few months ago ~~Mom~~ Mother Odinson approached me about it. I think she'd found that I was searching, or attempting to search and primarily hitting walls on every side, and wanted to warn me off the trail. 

"What are you afraid of?" I asked her. "If you are my true mother, than what do you have to fear from the woman who simply gave me birth and gave me up?"

"I fear that you'll be disappointed," she told me. "I fear that you'll have your heart broken."

How could finding where I really come from break my heart? How could finding the people who created me, the people with whom I really belong, disappoint me? Yes, I understand that my biological mother gave me up for a reason, and I'm sure it was a very good one, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want to be found. She did what she felt was best for her child, but I'm sure she must think of me just as often as I think of her. How could she not? 

I'm going to find her. I'm going to find my father, too, although that might be harder because it's possible that he may not be listed on the birth certificate. I don't care, though. No obstacle will stop me. 

When I first said that I was going to find my family, they told me that when I turned eighteen they couldn't stop me. I told them that they couldn't stop me no matter what age I am, but I've found that although they cannot, those responsible for the care and keeping of Vital Records certainly can. They were unimpressed by my argument that age is just a number, and that the difference between seventeen and eighteen is so small that it hardly makes a difference. "It's the law," they told me, and that was that. 

But there are ways around those things, I'm sure. It's just a matter of gaining access, and I happen to know someone who is quite good at that sort of thing. Of course, getting him to agree to help me might be a bit tricky, but I'm working on that. 

Right now, though, the play is closing in, and then SATs, and so that's where my focus will have to be for the next little while. But the summer is not so very far away (although it certainly feels it) and it stretches before me like a great expanse of opportunity. 

This will be the year that I discover who I really am.

Loki

* * *

**Natasha**

January 1, 2014

Natasha,

I don't know when you're reading this. Maybe a year from now, maybe longer. Maybe you will never read it. Maybe it will be so far in the future that you'll actually need reminding of the year that you've survived, but honestly, I'm not sure that day will ever come. I'm not sure it's possible to forget the things that you've been through. 

So I've vowed to remember them. Maybe not every detail, but as much of it as I can, so that in a year or five or fifty, you can see how far you've come from where you were. 

At this time last year, you wouldn't have been able to imagine where you are now. I'm only just learning how to imagine a future. Before it never seemed like a possibility, first in the orphanage and then in that apartment with your uncle who turned out not to be, in that room where you were forced to give yourself to men who never should have been allowed to touch you, who didn't deserve you, who took from you so much that for a little while you almost lost yourself entirely, and where you still had to sleep surrounded by the memories, the monsters in the shadows, the scents of sweat and sex, alcohol and smoke and sickening cologne, with drawers and a closet filled with a dead girl's clothes...

There was no space to dream. There were only nightmares.

But this time last year, you made a choice, or you started to make a choice, and now all of that is the past. This time last year, your best friend showed up at your window even though you'd told him not to come there... hadn't you? It blurs together and maybe you warned him after that, but I think it was before... and asked you to come to a party. You told him no. You told him to go away. You told him you couldn't.

He left. He went to the party, leaving you alone in that house of horrors, but he didn't know, not entirely, not all of it, but he knew something, he felt it, you'd told him a little and he'd guessed more, and he'd held you only a week before, held you tight and kept you warm, and he kissed you back when you kissed him, and you slept together, just slept, and that memory saved you over and over again in the days in between. 

You wanted to be with him, more than anything. You wanted to be where he was, where your friends – the people you knew, maybe they weren't friends yet, not entirely, but you couldn't let anyone in, because that put you at risk, and put _them_ at risk, and you hadn't meant to let him in either but you'd lost that battle very early on – were, and so you snuck out even though you knew you would pay for it later (and you did, of course you did, you paid for everything one way or another). You went to the party. You got there right before midnight, and he came down to get you from the lobby so excited that you'd shown up and you didn't kiss, you didn't let him kiss you, not in front of everyone (or anyone) but it was good anyway. It was perfect anyway, because you were where you wanted to be, and you started the new year safe, if not for long.

His name is Clint, but you know that. You're not going to forget that, not ever. He's not with me now; he's still asleep in the bed we shared last night, the bed where you (I? we? I'm sticking with you) found pleasure in his arms that you never thought you'd ever find, not after what you'd been through, not after what you'd had done to you. You didn't want to get up and leave him, but you woke up and couldn't go back to sleep, and he wasn't having nightmares (it's as rare for him as it is for you... or maybe it's not so rare anymore... I hope it's not so rare anymore) so you didn't want to wake him. So you got up and made coffee and you're on the couch hoping that he'll wake up and come find you, just to have him nearby. You feel safer when he's nearby. 

You wouldn't be here without him. You would have died. You would have killed yourself. Maybe not the time when he saved you, but at some point it would have become too much. You clung to him, and he never asked too many questions. 

But maybe I should slow down, back up. Maybe I should start from the beginning of the year and work my way forward and see where it takes me. 

It's in January that he finds out. After the party, you help work on things for the school musical, and one day you leave late and your uncle (it's just easier to call him what he pretended to be, you know that he isn't but you didn't then, not for sure) comes to get you from the school, angry, and he keeps you out of school the entire next week and takes away your phone and you can't even tell him that you're okay, you have no way out, no escape, and you're falling apart and trying to hold it together but it's hard, harder every day. And then he shows up. You don't know it. He shows up and you are with a man, a man is with you, and he sees something. He can't see much, but he sees something, sees enough that he thinks he knows, and you go to the window after to try to breathe air that hasn't been breathed by anyone else yet, that isn't forced into your lungs from someone else's, and you light a cigarette to burn the taste of things you want to forget and probably never will, and he's there, and he's sick, and you hear that in the quiet and you look down, and he's there, and you call to him, tell him to wait, because he's _there_ where you told him not to be, by then you know you'd told him not to be, but there he is and you ask for him to stay, you need him to stay even if it puts both of you in danger, you need him, you _need_ him and... 

He doesn't stay. He runs. You try to call him, try to text him, try to make him come back and he doesn't come back, and you crumble, you crack, you start to break. 

Your uncle lets you go back to school that Monday but everything is different, everything has changed, and you lost him, and it's better for him, safer for him. You try to tell yourself it's better for you, too, but you can't make yourself believe it, because it's not. You have nothing now. But he gets into a fight and he says it's not about you, not everything is about you, Natalia Romanova, and you told him the same once not long before but he tosses your words back in your faces, tosses that name back in your face, that name that he doesn't call you, because you are Natasha to him, and sometimes 'Tasha which no one else calls you, ever, and you harden your heart, because he promised and he lied and you cling to your anger, nails dug into it but it's flimsy and shreds between your fingers. 

You make it through the day somehow. The next day you don't bother to go to school. There is no point. He's not there and so what if he was? It's over, without you ever really knowing what it was or might have been.

You walk out into the cold that night, no coat, no gloves, nothing to protect you from it and you don't care because you're determined now to freeze out everything, to go numb so you don't, won't, can't feel anything anymore, and especially not the place in your heart where he isn't anymore, and all the places on your skin where you can remember his touch and the warmth and strength of him when you wore your own strength like armor, and wore it well enough that no one knew (except him sometimes, because he could see right through you) that it was made of tinfoil at best.

You build a fire but if it gives off any heat you don't really feel it. You hear someone approach and you don't care who it is because what is left to take from you? If they want money, you have none. If they want your body, well, you're used to that. If they want your life... you're ready to be done with it anyway.

But it's him, and he doesn't want anything.

No. That's not right. He does want something. He wants you to live. He wants to hold you, warm you, protect you from yourself because you've already given up but he won't give up on you. He will fight you – he does fight you – for it, until you are weak and tired, too tired to keep fighting, and he takes you home and gets you warm and lays beside you. 

And in the morning you wave the last tattered shreds of your anger in his face and he catches them, presses them into your palms so that they don't slip from between your fingers, because he thinks you are right to be angry, because he made a promise and he broke it, but he won't break it again.

You believe him. You want to believe him so you do, and you let it go, and the crimson threads of the flag that was once your anger instead weave a tale that hurts to tell and you can't even look at him to see how it feels to hear it.

You expect him to run from you, even after his renewed promise, but he doesn't. He doesn't run. He doesn't let you run from him either. Not anymore. If you run, you run together.

In February there is a storm, a huge snowstorm like you've never seen before, even with everything that's said about Russian winters. School is canceled, and it looks like it might be for a few days, and you are scared that you will be trapped with your uncle and whatever men he decides should have you for days with no escape. But Clint doesn't let that happen. You think his plan will fail, that there is no way that he can keep you away from it, but he does. His foster parents are angry, but they let you stay. For two days, almost three, you are safe, and even for a few moments once in a while you start to imagine what it would be like if this could be your life, and you forget what will be waiting for you when you get home.

But he doesn't punish you. Not in the ways that you expect. He acts almost as if nothing happened. You start to think, maybe even to hope, that he will let this go. You let yourself be caught up in Valentine's Day. You give Clint your heart, cut from red felt and pinned to his chest, because it is safer with him. You don't want to go home, because when he accepts it it feels like possibility and you want to see where it could go but you can't. 

Your uncle hasn't forgotten, you discover too late. He's just been biding his time. Now is the time, on this day, this holiday that is supposed to be about love, he turns it on its head, turns it perverse, turns it against you and laughs when you crumble. 

You run out into the cold again, but you wear a coat this time. You're not trying to die. You're trying to live. You call Clint and ask him to come find you. You aren't lost exactly; you could find your way if you read the street signs but everything streaks and blurs and it's too hard so you propel yourself forward half-blind until he finds you, and you try to run to him but you slip, you fall, and you can't pick yourself back up.

But he can. He picks you up, and he holds you. He holds you and lets you cry, lets you cry until it feels like there is no water left inside of you, until you've wrung yourself out against his shoulder, and he holds you and he doesn't let go. He doesn't ask questions and he doesn't let go. 

And then he kisses you. Knowing where you've been, what you've done, what's been done to you, knowing close enough to everything that the rest is just details, inconsequential to the larger picture which is that you're dirty, so dirty you can never been clean, that there is nothing left of you that he can have that someone hasn't already had before...

... except your heart, which is all and entirely his, pinned to his chest still maybe...

... he kisses you. He kisses you like he means it, like none of it matters, like he looks at you and sees a person and not a thing, and you've forgotten what it's like to be looked at like that, and he takes you home, his home, and he fights to keep you there when you get caught, but this time he can't win and you have to go back, but you have his heart now too, purple for a wounded warrior which is both of you, and you cling to that because it's what you need to get you through the night, and tomorrow and the day after and all the days after that.

March is the play, and parties and people you thought you hated turning around and helping you so that you can't entirely hate them anymore, even if you think the world might be better off if they developed a bad case of laryngitis for a while. 

March and into April is searching for a way to get out, to get away from your uncle without having to leave everything you've become attached to here, without having to leave the country, without having to leave _him_. It takes time, and while you're searching it's still happening, and every day it gets worse because even as you try to numb yourself to it, float outside of yourself while it happens, even as you know that you're fighting to get out it's not happening fast enough and you're starting to lose hope that it will ever end.

He is your rock, your anchor, and you cling, sometimes physically and sometimes not. One time you refuse, and your uncle lets you, but you pay for that worst of all, and in the morning you cannot open your mouth without the threat of being sick or screaming, so you don't. You curl up with Clint, hide away from everything and everyone until he's poured enough of his light into you to push back the darkness so you can breathe and speak without choking.

April is your birthday, and you make a decision then, because you have proof now. You have proof that your uncle is not who he says he is, and he brought you here not to save you but to use you, and it's not just you, there are others, and there were others, and you need to get out, get away, but you can't do it on your own. So you tell Mr. Coulson, and he listens, and he believes you when you say how serious it is, and he calls the FBI, and it feels like a miracle when they listen too. They send someone to talk to you. They tell you that they're going to get you out, but it's going to take time. You don't know how much time, and any amount is too much, but you make it through somehow. 

Finally they go and arrest your uncle, arrest the other men that he is involved with, dismantle their whole operation, and you are free. You are safe. You go to live with Mr. Fury, who is apparently able to be an emergency foster parent, and also has a background that convinces the FBI that you'll be safe in his care. You don't question it too much, even though it's not the most comfortable arrangement, because it's the only option that you have that allows you to stay nearby. It's against the advice of the FBI agents, who want to put your into witness protection or something similar, who want to get you as far away from all of it as they can so that there's no chance someone will find you and hurt you, silence you, keep you from making sure that they can never get away with anything like this again. But you don't want to leave your life, the life you've managed to build here. You don't want to leave Clint.

Mr. Fury asks you what he can do to help make things easier. You tell him that you want Clint with you. You know when you ask that you're not going to get what you want, but he surprises you and says that he'll see about arranging for Clint to be able to spend the night on that first night. And he does. You eavesdrop on the conversation, and he tells the Sullivans that neither of you has ever really had the chance to dream, and now you do, and he wants us both to be able to wake up on that first day of the first future we've ever really had with the person who we love most, and that's each other. Maybe those aren't his exact words but that's the sentiment.

They don't want to agree to it, but they do, and Clint is allowed to stay. He stays that night, and many other nights because I think they realize that we will find a way to be together anyway so they might as well give permission and make everyone's lives easier.

That is in May. You still have nightmares almost every night. You still listen for the sounds of men coming to your door to take from you what you don't want to give. You still call or text Clint at all hours because you need to know that there's someone out there, that _he_ is out there, and that no one has managed to take him from you. 

In June you do the makeup of a woman will not be alive in a few days, making her feel beautiful so that when her face is projected onto a screen so her son knows that she is there for her graduation just as she promised she would be when she should have died six months ago. A week later you attend her funeral.

In July you go to Boston without permission to see fireworks on the fourth of July, and you don't say much but the fact that it is Independence Day means more to you than you expected it would, since you are not American. You think that maybe it means more to you than it does to the others, who take so much for granted. You get caught and you get in trouble, but there are worse things, so many worse things, that only the threat of the possibility that you could get taken away sinks in, but still you can't help pressing your luck sometimes. You're young and you're alive, after all.

You're still not free, though. Not quite, not yet. Finally they tell you that the trial is starting, months after your uncle was arrested. You have to take time away from your job at a summer camp and are forced to stay in a hotel where you have no access to the outside world. You have to testify, to relive all of the worst moments of your life to date, and you guard your tongue so carefully so that you don't say anything about Clint, because you don't know that word won't somehow get out to people who weren't arrested, because there's no way that they got all of them, and that they won't come after Clint to get to you and shut you up.

It's hard for you, so hard, and you're barely holding it together. He's not doing any better, although you don't completely understand why, but one night he finally convinces Fury to let him talk to you even though he's not supposed to, and he is hurting, you can feel him hurting even through the phone, and usually he's the one telling you that there are good things in the world still, but tonight he can't so you tell him instead. You dream a place for the two of you when all of this is over, where you are safe and happy. You dream for him until he is asleep, or you hope he is, and then you curl up and can't sleep yourself because where you are is not where you want to be.

But then it's over. You don't know the outcome yet, but the trial is over and you don't have to stay locked up anymore because there's nothing more to be said or done. You go to find him, and he's with his brother, who left him for dead – maybe by choice and maybe not – a year ago, before you knew him, and who now is trying to convince him to leave, to go back on the road with the circus, and you think that he will. You think that he will leave you behind because being around you, loving you, is too hard, and he would be better off with his family, in the life that he has always known. 

You think he is going to choose Barney over you, and your heart breaks and you try to let him go because what else are you supposed to do? You gained one thing and you're losing another, and he promised, except maybe he thinks you don't need him now and so he doesn't have to keep that promise anymore.

But he doesn't. He chooses you. He stays with you, for you... for himself, too, you hope, but whatever the reason, you don't lose him. 

A few days later the verdict comes in. Guilty. And it feels like you can finally draw a full breath now, like a weight has finally been lifted, even though there's still a chance someone could come looking for you, there's still always a chance that it could come back to haunt you somehow. 

You finish the summer at the camp, and on the last weekend before school starts again, you go to Tony's cabin with the rest of the group, and no one says anything when you and Clint choose a room together. And it's there that it happens, for the first time, in the morning with the sun coming up, chasing back all of the shadows that the monsters might hide in and leaving just the two of you, still a little sleepy, more relaxed than you can ever remember being. You're nervous, yes, a little, because what if you can't push it all out of your head, what if you panic... but you trust him, you trust him to be gentle, to take care of you, to love you as he makes love to you, and that's what it is, what it's never been before but there's nothing else it could be called, and you never dreamed you could feel this way, that someone else could make you feel this way, that your body could fit so perfectly with someone else's that you welcome it because it just feels _right_.

It's hard to go home after that, hard to go back to reality, but you don't have a choice. And when you do, it's all turned on its head again because another girl comes to stay at Mr. Fury's, which you didn't expect and didn't like, but you also didn't have a say. Her name is Jessica and she doesn't want to be there just as much as you don't want her there, but wherever she's come from is worse because it's also clear she has no intention of ever going back. 

She doesn't know how to lock a door, you discover, and she's worried that Mr. Fury might be a threat. It tells you a lot without her having to say much at all. Clint makes her nervous, too, and she will make sure to keep you between her and him when he's around, but she eventually gets over that. It's not easy, adjusting to having her there. You misunderstand each other a lot, and you fight, and it's a little like being back at the orphanage, and you think maybe it's a little like being back wherever she came from, although she doesn't talk about it, and maybe that's the problem.

But you start to get used to her, and you start to try to include her in the things that you do with your group of friends even though she initially rejected all of them because she wanted to be "normal". You think she has realized that that's not possible. In October you all go to a haunted corn maze, and you spend the evening at the hospital with Steve because his asthma gets so bad his regular medicine isn't enough. 

Carol comes into your life as Jessica's tutor. You've met her before, on the Fourth of July, but she was so drunk you don't think she remembers. She's good for and with Jess, though, and she seems to mostly be able to keep things together, so maybe it was just a fluke, too much celebration, but any time there's alcohol around you find yourself watching her out of the corner of your eye.

Tony gives Clint a car for his birthday, and suddenly the world opens up so much wider, because you don't have to worry about being able to get a ride from his foster parents or Mr. Fury, even if you still have to get permission most of the time.

Pepper convinces you to help with the play again, but this time instead of just helping Steve with painting the sets and occasionally doing a little work on the costumes when it's needed, you end up in charge of the costume crew. Jessica is on it, but she doesn't want to be. It presses some button that she refuses to acknowledge or talk about. You don't force her, even if you think maybe someone should.

You spend Thanksgiving with everyone at Tony's. It's your first real Thanksgiving because it's the first one that you feel as if you have anything to be thankful for. Last year you had only just met Clint, but you didn't know yet where that was going to lead. Last year at Thanksgiving, you hadn't... your uncle hadn't sold you. Not yet, but you could sense something was coming. It started not long after. This year, though, everything was different. Everything was better. 

You all decide to do a Secret Santa, and you, Clint, and Jess go shopping. Her mother and other women from where she came from try to grab her, take her home. You don't let them. Jess is badly shaken, but she tries to hide it as always. She talks to Carol about it, maybe, but you're not sure. 

In December you go to a Christmas Eve party at Clint's foster father's parents' house, and everyone asks you where you're from, and asks Clint about his hearing and it's a long night, but if you'd known how much longer it was going to get you might have had a better sense of humor about it. In the middle of the party you get a call from Tony telling you that Bruce is in the hospital. Mrs. Sullivan takes you there right away, which shocks you because she was the one who insisted that Clint had to go to the party in the first place, and didn't really want to agree to let you come but gave in because it meant he would behave better. 

You find out later that Bruce tried to kill himself, and that Tony was the one who found him. He's angry at Bruce for doing it, thinks he's selfish and that there is nothing so bad that killing yourself is the only answer. You tell them... not everything, but enough. You tell them about what happened in January, how you wanted so much to give up, and it was only because of Clint that you are alive at all. You walk away from them after, and Clint goes with you, and you hold each other and you cry, because it hurts to tear open those wounds when they were finally healing, for both of you.

You sleep in the waiting room, and you wake up and find out he's survived the night. Mrs. Sullivan brings donuts and coffee for everyone, because you're all there, waiting for news. You go home for a little while when the doctors finally tell you that it looks like he'll be all right, but he won't be able to see anyone for a few hours. You come back in the afternoon, all of you, and you have your Christmas party in his hospital room. 

You all see each other so much it becomes too much and you just want to escape all of them, all of it, even Clint sometimes but not most of the time, and you almost don't go to the New Year's Eve party because you're so tired of being around people, but in the end you do, and you dance and you get Jess to dance and you fall into bed with Clint and there are no monsters hiding in the dark corners and you fall asleep knowing you'll wake up in the morning aching but in the best way possible.

He's awake now, writing his own letter, and you watching him and he watches you, and you catch each other at it and look back down at the words on the page. He rests his right hand on your foot as he writes with his left, and it anchors you and maybe it anchors him too.

And it's perfect. It's better than anything you ever expected to have, and you like to think that you will have many more mornings like this, where everything feels possible but you're content just exactly where and as you are.

Happy New Year.

Natasha

* * *

**Pepper**

Dear Pepper,

If you're reading this, it means you must have survived your junior year of high school. That's good, because sometimes you're not sure that you're going to make it. Although saying that you're not sure you're going to survive it is a bit melodramatic, and feels really inappropriate considering that one of your friends almost died a week ago. 

But that makes it sound like an accident, and it wasn't. He tried to kill himself, because he got to such a dark place that he couldn't see any other way to get out. Then another one of your friends (I _think_ I can call them friends, although we don't spend a lot of time outside of school activities together, unless Tony is throwing a party, but then you don't spend much time outside of school activities in general so maybe that's not surprising) admitted that she'd gotten to a similarly dark place a year ago, and it was only because of her friend – now her boyfriend – that she's still alive today.

You thought you were alone. But that's melodramatic, too. You've never _really_ thought about killing yourself. You've never made a plan, never decided, 'This is how I'm going to do it.' But you've wanted to just fall asleep and not wake up plenty of times. You've wanted to just disappear. Which isn't the same thing, but it feels that way.

It's hard to tell anymore who puts more pressure on you: you or your parents. It used to be your parents, always, and they thought it was for your own good. They wanted you to be the best you could be. They wanted you to be happy, and their version of happy meant getting good grades and being involved in a million activities and helping others and always being on the go and getting things done. None of those are bad things, but there's a limit that you reach where you start to just get tired, and you wonder, "Is this really doing any good?"

Everything is all about the college application and beyond that, the resume. It's all about making yourself look good on paper so that people will like you, people will want you, people will look up to you and envy you, want to be you, and you'll be able to look down on them all and smile and be proud of everything that you've accomplished.

But it's lonely at the top. That's what they say, isn't it? Are you at the top now? Is it lonely? Are you still lonely?

You don't even know if you can really call the people that you've spent the last two holidays with friends, and what does that say? You don't know if they really want you around, or if they're just being polite. You don't know what genuine looks like because you're not sure you've ever seen it. Everyone you know... no, everyone that you grew up with, even your parents and your parents friends, they walk around hiding behind masks, facades, and you've caught them before stabbing each other in the back, and is that really what you want for yourself?

It's hard to sort out what _you_ want from what everyone – and it's not just your parents, don't blame it all on them – want for you. It's not like you don't want to have people respect and admire you. It's not like you don't enjoy being in charge of things, and having things run smoothly and then when it's all over being able to point to the finished product and say, "Look what I've achieved." 

But there's more to life than that, isn't there? You reach a point where you spend so much time doing that you forget how to just _be_. And then suddenly you find yourself in a hospital waiting room, helpless as your friend's life hangs in the balance, put there by his own hand, and you're completely helpless. There is nothing you can do. There is no way for you to fix this. You have no choice but to just try to be.

You don't know how to do it. So you decide to be for other people, for one other person at least, because he needs someone to pin him down, to anchor him, and he's so raw and vulnerable, so not himself, that you pull him in instead of pushing him away, and you see that he wears masks just as much as you do, and it shouldn't surprise you but for some reason it does. 

He's not a bad guy. Sometimes it's hard to remember that because he drives you absolutely crazy, but he's really not a bad guy. Yes, he sometimes thinks the world revolves around him, and sometimes he only thinks of himself. Sometimes he makes decisions based on what he thinks is the best thing for other people, and can't be budged from them, and while maybe that's not right, it doesn't mean he's always _wrong_ , either. And sometimes he's just a scared kid, like you're all sometimes scared kids, and you need to learn to cut him some slack. 

Of course, next year he'll be going off to college even though you started out in the same grade, because he managed to get enough credits to graduate early, and with some college classes under his belt on top of that, and part of the reason you don't like him, or you say you don't like him (and sometimes you really _can't_ stand him, but I'm pretty sure that's true for everyone) is that you're jealous. You're jealous of everything that he's already accomplished, and the fact that he would be someone, he would be on top of the world even if he never did anything just be virtue of his name. 

You don't want to be like that, though. You don't want to be Pepper Potts, heiress to a fortune. You don't want to be American royalty. You want to fight for everything that you have, to claw your way up and to know when you get there that it was something that you _earned_. It's not as if you don't already have _some_ advantages. You always know that you'll have food to eat and a place to sleep. You have parents who maybe push you too hard sometimes, but they're not bad people. You haven't had to deal with abuse or neglect. No one has ever hit you, or hurt you, and that's more than can be said for a lot of the people that you know. So really, you don't have anything to complain about.

You just have to make it through the rest of this year, and next, without having a nervous breakdown, and then you'll be in college and the world will open up and everything will be great. Except sometimes you start to wonder if that will really be the case, or if it will be more of the same. Is college really different? Maybe it depends where you go, and where _are_ you going to go? Will you be able to get scholarships? Will you have to take out loans? Should you go to an all-girls school, because that will help level the playing field, or should you go to a co-ed school because that is going to give you a more realistic idea of what you're going to be up against once you're out there in the job-seeking world? You don't even know yet what you want to major in, although you're pretty sure you want to do something in business or management. And will focusing on getting where you want to be five, ten years down the line mean giving up the things that you enjoy doing?

Does becoming who you want to be mean giving up who you are now?

It's all about finding balance. That's what Mr. Coulson says. But you were never very good at the balance beam, were you? It's why you gave up gymnastics and switched to figure skating, but then you were balancing on a knife's edge on ice, and that wasn't really any better, was it? So you gave that up, too. Sometimes you think you should have persevered, but in the end wouldn't it have just made you crazier? You were already having panic attacks about it, at ten years old. You'd started too late; you couldn't keep up. 

I hope you've learned how to balance things by now, whenever you're reading this. I hope that you've gotten where you want to be, or are on the right track, and that you haven't had a complete mental breakdown, and that you've maybe been able to hold on to a few of the things that make you happy along with the things that make you feel accomplished. Because I think there's satisfaction in both.

I hope you didn't lose track of your friends, either. I hope that you've managed to hold on to them, or found new ones that can fill that place in your life that helps give you perspective, and that also helps you get away from everything you do and lets you just be for a little while.

Breakfast is ready now, so I guess I should end this. 

Sincerely,  
Pepper Potts  
January 1, 2014

* * *

**Steve**

January 1, 2014

Dear Steve,

I don't know when you'll read this letter. Maybe you'll read it at the same time that you read the letter that your mother wrote for you before she died, which she gave to you without a word, and which you still haven't been able to bring yourself to open. You kept telling yourself that you would read it tomorrow, and then tomorrow again, until they stacked up into weeks. You said that you would read it on your birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas...

It's been a long year. Not a bad year, not always, but not a good one, either. How can it be a good year when you lose your mother, your only remaining parent, your primary source of love and support? Except it was a long time coming, and in the end it was a relief, wasn't it? For both of you, it was a relief. You knew that she was suffering a lot more than she let on. You knew that she'd been fighting and fighting to stay alive just to see your graduate, because she'd promised you she would. You knew that she was hanging on for you, and that she was ready to go.

You know that she's at peace now.

You know you have to move on. 

And you have moved on, as best you can. You're in school now – just community college, but it's a place to start, and it's less expensive to get all of your gen eds out of the way and then transfer to finish things up that way – and you're keeping in touch with the people who became your friends only a little more than a year ago and who stuck with you through the worst of everything when people you've known much longer didn't.

I hope that whenever you read this, they're still part of your life. I know that you'll do whatever you can to keep it that way, because they're amazing people, each and every one of them. Tony, who made it so that your mother could attend your graduation even though she couldn't leave her bed. Bruce, who you almost lost at Christmas because it became too much for him, who's fighting back now but who still needs everyone's support. Thor, who you didn't know that well in school, even though you were in the same grade and he was friendly with everyone, but who you now email all the time, comparing college stories and keeping him updated on how things are at home. Loki, who doesn't want to let on how much he cares. Pepper, who pushes herself too hard but who is going places, and who can accomplish whatever she sets her mind to. Carol, who you don't really know very well, but who hides her pain in a way that you recognize all too well, and Jess who wears a mask and pretends that everything is fine, but who pushes everyone away with her prickly attitude, and you can understand that too even if it's not you. Natasha, who is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, but who did your mother's makeup and who loves with a depth that surprises everyone, including herself. And Clint... Clint who doesn't know where he's going or how he's getting there but who isn't giving up.

And there's Peggy, too, and your friends and school, and you're building yourself a family to make up for the fact that you've lost the one that you had, and you're going to have to keep doing it because otherwise the world feels pretty dark and lonely a lot of the time.

I feel as if I should make some resolutions for the upcoming year, but right now it sort of seems like the best thing to do is to just keep doing what I'm doing. Keep going to class and getting good grades, keep making art, both for school and just because it helps me work through things. Keep being there for the others when they need support, because as much as a lot of them seem older than their years, more mature than they should have to be (a feeling that I know well), they're still just kids, and they need someone to be there, and sometimes that someone isn't or can't be their parents. And maybe it can't always be you, either, but sometimes all they need is someone to listen, to be the voice of reason (remember the night when Clint and Natasha turned up on your doorstep, having run away because of some misunderstanding with Clint's foster parents?) and to give them the space to cool off and figure things out.

I never really thought of myself as a leader, per se, but here I am, and hey, it's probably good practice for being a teacher. I hadn't really thought about teaching high school; I'd always imagined teaching younger students, but maybe I'm actually better suited to dealing with older kids after all. I don't know if that means going to school for longer when you're teaching art; I guess I'll have to look into that. And maybe art therapy, because although I've never really done anything like that with anyone officially, I feel like sometimes even just the kids painting the sets get something kind of cathartic out of it. I could be wrong.

Anyway, I guess the goal is just to get through the year, to try to have each day be the best that it can be, and maybe not every day will be great, but just to always keep the hope when things aren't great that tomorrow will be better. Because tomorrow is always a new day, and a new start, and hope is what is going to keep us all alive. That's what Mom taught me, and that's what I have to believe.

Happy New Year.

Steve

* * *

**Thor**

January 1, 2014

Everyone else is doing it, so I guess I will too. It's strange, being here with these people after I've been away for a few months. They're my friends, of course, they're still my friends, but at the same time, I feel like there's some kind of disconnect between where I am and where they are. I guess it makes sense, with me being in college now, and farther away than, say, Steve, who can still visit with them and is working on the play with them and everything, but... it feels like it's more than that.

Maybe it's that we were never in the same place to begin with, even though I was in that group with them, that Mr. Coulson put together. I think they look at me and they see the Golden Boy that everyone seemed to think I was, and that I tried so hard to be, and they sort of hold me apart from them because I haven't been through what they have, as far as having people look at them and see someone that they're not, someone less than who they are. No one looks at me and judges me and finds me lacking, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

It's hard, though, because it's not the same at college. I went from being a big fish in a little pond to a little fish in a big pond, and just being friendly isn't enough all the time. I'm smart, but maybe not as smart as I thought I was. I have to work harder. It's not all handed to me. I can't just expect to get good grades because I always have, because teachers expect it so they just maybe see past the flaws. 

I don't know. There's a part of me that wants to just be able to belong here, to come back and be the big fish and to have everyone love me and to be the golden boy... but I wouldn't be anymore, because if I came back I would be the one who couldn't make it on his own, who couldn't handle college and having to work a little harder.

Maybe it's just everything that we've been through in the last week. Maybe it's just that I see these kids and I see how hard things are for them, harder than what I'm going through, and I want to be here for them, or... No, that doesn't make sense. I don't know. 

I miss my brother. I didn't think I would, but... I do. I miss him a lot. I miss his snark and his eye rolling. I miss the fact that he was never willing to let me get away with anything. I miss the fact that he was the darkness to my light. He kept me in balance, even though he often didn't feel like he was in balance, and even though he hasn't mentioned it lately, I know that he still wants to find his birth parents... and what will happen then? 

He says that our parents aren't his parents. He says that I'm not his brother. But hasn't he learned anything, being around Steve and Tony, Bruce, Pepper, Natasha and Clint, even the new girls that I hardly know – Jess and Carol – hasn't he learned that family isn't just about blood? That it's hardly about that at all, when it comes right down to it. Family is about the people who you care about, who care about you. Family is about supporting each other, being there, and maybe he doesn't feel that, but if he doesn't is it our fault, or is it his? He pushes everyone away, holds them at arm's length, and maybe if he didn't do that they would accept them, but instead...

I don't know what I want from the upcoming year. I really don't. I've never been so confused about anything in my life as I am about the direction that it's going in right now. I'm not like Tony who will take over his father's company, who probably already holds a fistful of patents, or he should. I'm not like Steve, with his art and his desire to teach. I'm not like Pepper 'Most Likely to Succeed' Potts, who will accomplish whatever she puts her mind do. I'm just... a kid who's suddenly supposed to be an adult and to know what he wants when always before it was kind of decided for me.

So... I guess I just hope this year I'll figure it out. I hope that I'll find something to latch on to, to ground me and set me on the right path. And I hope that I don't lose my brother. And that's basically it.

Yeah. Happy New Year.

Thor

* * *

**Tony**

Tony Stark's To Do List – 2014 Edition

1\. Graduate high school.   
This is not a particularly lofty goal. Any idiot can graduate high school, and plenty do. 

2\. Maintain 4.0 GPA in both high school and college classes.  
Again, this isn't that difficult to do, with a little application. Although this is sometimes threatened by those tedious assignments that fall through the cracks because they are just so _boring_ and _meaningless_ that I can't spare the brain cycles to remember them. I'm told I should write them down, to which I can only say, "Shouldn't I have a secretary or a personal assistant for that?"

3\. Begin attending MIT in the fall.  
Obtain and maintain standing as most brilliant student they have ever seen. In this I could, potentially, have a rival in Bruce, but we're in two different disciplines, so possibly I will have to settle for simply being the most brilliant student they have ever seen in my discipline. Baby steps.

4\. Attend MIT summer program (?)  
I guess that should technically be number 3, and attending MIT proper should be number 4, but hey, don't try and cage me with your rules. I'm not sure if graduated seniors are actually eligible. I'll have to look into that. If they aren't, possibly look into other summer opportunities, such as an internship. I could probably talk to my father about that, have him pull some strings to get me in at Stark Tech; I'm the heir to the company, after all, but it might be good to see what the competition is up to. This _could_ be complicated by the fact that my name is Tony Stark.

4a. Temporarily change name to something other than Tony Stark to infiltrate enemy territory.  
Self-explanatory.

5\. Ask one Ms. Virginia "Pepper" Potts to the prom and actually have her say yes.  
All right, this list is completely out of order now. Ask me if I care. (Spoilers: I don't.)

Except... do I really want to go to prom? It's so trite, so cliché, and furthermore, half of my friends wouldn't be caught dead there. On the other hand, doesn't every girl dream of going to the prom? Isn't it one of those rite of passage things that we're all supposed to torture ourselves with in order to level-up? It's like the boss level of high school.

This item may require further consideration.

6\. Keep Bruce away from his father until he is able to be legally emancipated.  
Unfortunately, he is one of the youngest in his grade, and won't be eighteen until November of next year. Technically he might be able to seek emancipation now, but that might actually call his father's attention to him, which is the last thing that we need. Better to just have him stay here as much as possible while he is under the legal guardianship of his grandparents, and hope that the man drinks himself to death or gets killed in a bar fight or something.

7\. Make sure that Bruce is also able to attend MIT, through fair means or foul.  
He applied. I made sure that he applied. I didn't apply for him, because that would be wrong, but I nagged him until I knew for sure that his application had been submitted. Now we have to wait to see if he is accepted, but there's no reason that he wouldn't be. He's concerned about the financial aspect, but I'm confident that scholarships should cover the bulk of the costs. After all, Stark Tech offers scholarships...

8\. Keep the rest of the group doesn't do anything stupid and/or crazy, and survives until 2015 (and beyond).  
This might be easier said than done. They have a tendency to be a bit self-destructive.

9\. Complete personal projects, including upgrades to JARVIS and your own operating system.   
Also, figure out how to program Dummy and You so that they're a little more helpful and a little less... Dummy and You. (Or not.)

10\. HAVE FUN.


End file.
